Chicago Tribune - 05 May 2024

Steps to Determine a ‘Biological New tests promise to tell you if you have the cells of a 30-year-old or a 60By Dana G. Smith IF YOU’VE EVER been to a high school reunion, you know that some people seem to age faster than others. Twenty-five years after graduation, one classmate can appear a decade younger than the rest, another a decade older. “People know that intuitively,” said Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, “but they don’t understand that it’s a biology that we’re trying to discover.” Scientists are working to quantify this phenomenon and put a number to a person’s “biological age” by looking at their cellular health instead of how many years they’ve been alive. Some of these measurements are now marketed as direct-to-consumer blood tests. But before you shell out hundreds of dollars to find out how old you really are, make sure you know what you’re paying for. Experts caution that while these tests are interesting in theory, and could be valuable research tools, they aren’t ready for prime time. HOW IS IT MEASURED? Researchers define biological age as “the accumulation of damage we can measure in our body,” said Dr. Andrea Britta Maier, co-director of the Centre for Healthy Longevity at the National University of Singapore. That damage comes from natural aging, as well as from our environment and behaviors. The concept is often attributed to the British physician-scientist Dr. Alex Comfort (perhaps better known for writing “The Joy of Sex”), who published a 1969 paper on the idea. But for decades, scientists didn’t know how they might measure someone’s biological age. Amajor advance came in 2013 when Steve Horvath, a professor of human genetics and biostatistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, proposed using a “clock” based on the emerging field of epigenetics. Over the course of our lives, our DNA accumulates molecular changes that turn on and off various genes. Dr. Horvath analyzed these changes in thousands of people and developed an algorithm to determine how they correlate with age. These changes happen naturally as we get older, said Jesse Poganik, an instructor at Harvard Medical School who researches biological aging; they can also be sped up by behaviors that affect health, like smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. As a result, estimates of biological age have been shown to be associated with things like life expectancy and health, he said. BE WARY OF CONSUMER TESTS Several companies now sell tests for around $300 that use this technology to calculate your biological age by analyzing your blood or saliva and comparing changes in your epigenome to population averages. But experts caution that epigenetic clocks can’t actually tell you much about your own health. That’s because they were designed to assess large groups of people, not individuals. Consequently, their results can be unreliable. At a conference where Dr. Horvath spoke about the topic, an audience member said he had taken two different tests and received two different ages, 10 years apart. Dr. Horvath said that the man should have saved his money. “Ithink you could say the best of them are not completely useless,” said Daniel Belsky, an associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who developed an epigenetic clock himself. “But these are not tried and tested clinical tools yet, so they’re more for the curious.” Another problem with the tests is that it’s unclear what to do with the results. Scientists don’t know how to reverse someone’s biological age — or whether that’s even possible. In part, that’s why the epigenetic clocks were developed in the first place. Researchers hope to use them in clinical trials for anti-aging interventions to measure potential changes in the life spans of hundreds or thousands of people at a time. None of this has stopped companies from selling these tests alongside personalized

LIVING WELL 5 Age’ 0-year-old. Can we measure the ‘accumulation of damage’ to our bodies? Would it matter? at the doctor’s office, like cholesterol or hemoglobin A1C, a marker for diabetes. They say that because many of these numbers increase as we get older, they can be used as a proxy for a person’s biological age. For example, if you’re 45 but your cholesterol levels look more like the average 50-yearold’s, the test results might say your biological age is older than your 45 years. Whether blood marker tests actually track biological age as opposed to general health is up for debate. But an advantage of this kind of test is that it measures factors that can be modified; we know how to lower blood sugar levels through medication and lifestyle changes, for example. In contrast, epigenetic age is currently more of a black box. “Expanding access and using more frequent testing to optimize health seems fairly reasonable to me,” Dr. Poganik said via email. But, he added, “any claims of accurate, individual-level determination of biological age should be approached with caution.” MIKE ELLIS health and lifestyle recommendations, in addition to supplements they say will roll back an individual’s biological age. A NEW SPIN ON OLD INFORMATION Epigenetic clocks aren’t the only products on the market promising to measure biological age. Some companies offer a panel of conventional blood tests you might receive

AS THE DIRECTOR of online sales for the builder CC Homes, Lorraine Sanchez encourages prospective buyers to go see the company’s houses in Ave Maria, a town in southwest Florida. Since last year, she has had a new marketing tool: Ave Maria is “certified” as a blue zone, a place geared to helping people live healthy, active lives. “It’s a great selling point,” she said. The term “blue zone” was coined two decades ago when Dan Buettner, an explorer for National Geographic, was investigating places around the world where people regularly lived to 100 and beyond. He deduced that residents of these mostly small, remote locales had such long, healthy lives because they stayed active, ate plant-based meals and formed lasting social ties, among other practices. The concept has become the latest wellness buzzword: Blue Zones, the company that sprang from Mr. Buettner’s research, has put its trademark on books, canned beans, bottled tea, frozen burrito bowls and even a series on Netflix. Now the real estate industry has jumped into the game. Blue Zones runs initiatives that certify towns and cities that meet healthy lifestyle criteria, and they help others remake themselves to promote longevity. The initiatives — often funded by health care systems and insurance companies with a vested interest in a hale and hearty population — promote solutions like smoking bans, biking paths and group activities that foster a sense of belonging. Eighty places in the United States — from Bakersfield, Calif., to Corry, Pa. — have ad- The Hottest Buzzword in WellneCommunities are being certified as Blue Zones, promoting health and loBy Jane Margolies opted these initiatives, called Blue Zone Projects. Some developers take inspiration from Blue Zones even if they are not seeking official certification. But in some cases, it appears to be more a marketing strategy than anything else, joining a flurry of real estate certification programs and having little to do with the modest way of life that Blue Zones is meant to reflect. A luxury hotel and condominium project in Miami is using the Blue Zones moniker for a medical facility on the premises that will offer plastic surgery. And there has been pushback in some quarters, including a part of Phoenix with a large minority population. Some nonprofit groups there wrote a letter criticizing an effort to organize a Blue Zones initiative, saying it would compete with plans already in progress, draining resources and funding. “This is like Lifestyle Medicine 101,” said Janelle Applequist, an associate professor in the Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications at the University of South Florida. “This is stuff we’ve known forever. They’re just repackaging it.” Mr. Buettner defended his company’s approach, saying it was based on exhaustive research and that instead of trying to convince individuals to change their behavior, as other wellness programs do, it focuses on changing the environment to make healthy choices easier. “On the surface it might look like what’s been done before,” he said. “But every single component of what we do is underpinned with evidence.” The Blue Zones phenomenon started when Mr. Buettner learned that the Japanese island of Okinawa produced the oldest people in the world, and in 1999 he set out to learn why. Within a decade, he and other researchers had identified four more blue zones: small communities in Italy, Costa Rica and Greece as well as Loma Linda, Calif., which had a high proportion of Seventh-day Adventists, many of them vegetarians. (The “blue” in blue zones came from the ink marks made 6 THE NEW YORK TIMES

PHOTOGRAPHS BY GESI SCHILLING FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES ess Seeps Into Real Estate ongevity, but is it a gimmick?

Ave Maria, part of a Blue Zone Project in southwest Florida, was started in 2005. The big church draws Catholic home buyers. And the town has hosted healthy activities like a 30-day walking challenge for residents. on maps pinpointing places where centenarians were concentrated.) Mr. Buettner distilled what residents of the blue zones had in common and set out to spread the gospel in books, articles and talks. He founded Blue Zones to manage all these activities and is now chairman. “I never set out to be a longevity guru,” he says at the outset of his Netflix series. Some questioned his claims and data.And since his initial investigations, some of the original blue zones have lost their longevity edge as processed foods supplanted meals made with homegrown ingredients and the sedentary ways of modern life took hold. But Mr. Buettner recently anointed a sixth blue zone: Singapore. The Southeast Asian island was different from the earlier five, which had grown organically, because its governmental policies nudged people to make healthier choices. Mr. Buettner had tested the idea of tweaking people’s surroundings to encourage healthy living with a project in a small Minnesota city, Albert Lea, in 2009. Changes spurred by the project — which included adding sidewalks so people could walk to shops — resulted in gains in life expectancy and a more vibrant downtown, Blue Zones proponents say. Property values rose, too. Today Adventist Health, a faith-based health care system, owns Blue Zones. And Sharecare, a digital health company, has been running many Blue Zone Projects, paying licensing and royalty fees to use the name and tenets. Localities, in turn, pay $3 million to over $40 million for the initiatives. The NCH Healthcare System initiated a Blue Zone Project in southwest Florida in 2015, starting in Naples, a city on the Gulf of Mexico. The project now covers 2,000 square miles encompassing smaller inland towns like Ave Maria. Ave Maria was started in 2005 by Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza and a backer of Roman Catholic causes. He teamed up with the Barron Collier Companies, a developer that had long owned the land on which Ave Maria sits. Being Catholic is not a requirement for residency, but the town’s name and its big church certainly hold appeal for Catholic home buyers. Blue Zones certification for the community is “kind of like getting the Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” said Victor Acquista, a retired primary care doctor and Ave Maria resident. He volunteers on a Blue Zones committee that has organized activities like a 30-day walking challenge and 30- day gratitude challenge. It is perhaps less obvious what Blue Zones principles — some gleaned from the daily lives of shepherds and people who

PHOTOGRAPHS BY GESI SCHILLING FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES LIVING WELL 7 It’s ‘kind of like getting the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.’ lie Lafaurie, co-executive director of operations and development. “It feels like robbing Peter to pay Paul,” she added. The groups also pointed out in a letter that similar projects lacked roots in the community and that efforts to organize a Blue Zones initiative had “a white savior complex.” Mr. León said he was sensitive to the concerns of the groups that signed the protest letter and was increasing his fund-raising so funds could be directed to them. Mr. Buettner said Blue Zone Projects could be challenging to execute, requiring a coordinated effort by people in all corners of a community. “There’s a lot of discipline and headaches and correcting course to make things work,” he added. grew their own food — have to do with a 50-story, $600 million luxury tower being developed in Miami by Royal Palm Companies that will have glass elevators and a roof deck with an infinity pool. The development, called Legacy Hotel & Residences and expected to open in 2026, will also have a Blue Zones Center, said Dan Kodsi, Royal Palm’s chief executive, describing it as “like a mall of the best longevity and wellness groups in the world.” A joint venture with Adventist Health was formed to operate the center. Mr. Kodsi said his project would cater to the boom in medical tourism. “We’re envisioning that you come in and learn about the Blue Zone lifestyle” before proceeding to a practitioner for a treatment or surgery, he said. It is a far cry from the original blue zone concept, but Mr. Kodsi may have hit on a winning formula for his project: He said that all 310 condos in the building had been sold and that so many practitioners had expressed interest in being part of the medical center that Royal Palm bought a nearby property to make room for everyone. Despite the growing popularity of blue zones, some organizers are finding resistance. Equality Health Foundation, a nonprofit spinoff of the Equality Health primary care platform, has been working to organize a Blue Zones Project in South Phoenix, an area with a mostly Black and Hispanic population that has lower incomes and lower life expectancy than predominantly white areas nearby. Tomás León, president of the foundation, said he was seeking to raise $10.5 million for the initiative. But some local groups have expressed concern that Blue Zones will duplicate efforts they already have underway and that the fund-raising drive will siphon off money that otherwise might go to their projects. For example, the Cihuapactli Collective, an advocacy group for Indigenous families, has plans for a wellness center that would require raising about $25 million, said Enjo-

8 THE NEW YORK TIMES Why Does Generation Z Believe Some young adults worry that physical changes are coming too fast. But By Callie Holtermann IT IS A disorienting moment for anyone who happens to be getting older. Look left, and teenagers are shopping for anti-aging serums. Look right, and supermodels in their 50s appear on magazine covers looking uncannily smooth. When an artificial intelligence filter that adds wrinkles took off last summer, it was treated as a kind of novelty: Influencers tried on digital frown lines and gasped. Anxiety around aging may be universal, but recently some members of Gen Z have been voicing acute distress. A few widely circulated social media posts have advanced the tantalizing theory that Gen Z is “aging like milk,” which is to say, not well. In one TikTok video that has been seen around 25 million times, Jordan Howlett, a 26-year-old with a dense beard and professorial glasses, says that he thinks he and other members of Gen Z look more mature because of the stressors heaped on the generation. In another, a wrinkle-free young woman named Taylor Donoghue feigns outrage at commenters who thought she might be in her early 30s. “Bye digging my own grave,” Ms. Donoghue, who is 23, wrote in her video’s caption. The oldest members of Gen Z are around 27. It may be that, like every human before them, they are simply getting older. The trend is all but certain to persist. Gen Z’s newfound preoccupation with aging has been greeted with a kind of schadenfreude in millennial pockets of social media. Commenters sneer: Do Gen Z-ers really believe they discovered age anxiety, the way they discovered low-rise jeans? Those seeking to cast blame have tried to pin Gen Z’s supposedly accelerated maturation on vaping, makeup, cancel culture or karma. Some have suggested the anti-aging products and procedures used by Gen Z-ers have instead made them look older. Other young people and experts say it’s no surprise that a generation raised on social media that came of age in the era of fillers and Facetune might be particularly attuned to the natural physical changes that occur with age. Ms. Donoghue, a content creator who lives in Manhattan, said that social media had made it easy for her to compare herself not only with others but with younger versions of herself, who are all lined up chronologically on her Instagram feed. Sometimes she scrolls back five years and thinks, “Oh my gosh, I was such a baby,” she said. When her “digging my own grave” video first took off, she thought it was funny. But she began to prickle as commenters dissected whether it was her hair, her lipstick or her skin that they believed made her look older. “At one point I was like, you know what, maybe I should bump up the Retin-A,” she said, referring to a skin product for acne and fine lines. Some of her friends in their early 20s get Botox, she said, and in a few years she expects to join them. A series of aging-related TikTok trends in recent months are further warping the fun house mirror. There are slide shows in GETTY IMAGES Through social media, members of Gen Z have a digital record of themselves over the years, perhaps making them especially attuned to the physical changes of aging.

It’s ‘Aging Like Milk’? tthey may just be getting older, as usual. The anxiety of an age group raised in a time of fillers and Facetune. youth ambassadors. Though Gen Z may be uniquely ambushed with this marketing and messaging on social media, dealing with aging and ageism — even in one’s 20s — is nothing new, said Sari Botton, 58, the editor of Oldster Magazine, a digital publication about aging. She wondered whether Gen Z members’ moment of sensitivity around aging might have less to do with their appearances and more to do with their anxiety about the next phase of adulthood. “I think it’s probably the old quarter-life crisis, and the realization that they’re going to have to make some big adult choices that they’re going to have to live with,” Ms. Botton said. As they age, Gen Z-ers will also have to let go of youth as a central part of their identity, said Mr. Howlett, whose video about looking older than 26 elicited more than 72,000 comments. He thinks that Gen Z’s fear of aging is accompanied by insecurity about what comes next. “Gen Z is so worried about turning 30, that time when you’re supposed to have everything put together,” he said. These insecurities are age-old, but increasingly they’re being processed in front of millions of viewers. “Your aging anxiety used to take place in the privacy of your own home or maybe with a very close friend or family member,” Professor Engeln said. “Now it happens on TikTok, with an audience.” which celebrities are gradually de-aged, like one that begins with Morgan Freeman at 85 and ends with him at 17. There are A.I. face filters that spit out equally believable versions of users as a grandparent or as a teenager. “There is a sense in which young people have forgotten what faces look like,” said Renee Engeln, 47, a psychology professor at Northwestern University and the director of the Body and Media Lab there. Can we blame them? Gen Z grew up endlessly scrolling through idealized versions of their own faces and the faces of others, Professor Engeln said. They have encountered more imagery of people with anti-aging cosmetic procedures and fewer examples of faces that have naturally aged, she added. Social media connects young people with both the pressure and the tools to modulate their ages the moment they log on, said Devorah Heitner, 48, an expert on children’s relationships with technology and the author of “Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World.” Online, 10-year-olds may pose as 13 to gain access to social media and because they want to participate in adult life, she said. For young women in particular, the impulse to age up online is soon eclipsed by the societal pressure to appear younger. “You’re basically supposed to be 25 from the time you’re 13 to 40,” Dr. Heitner said. Those pressures have been neatly packaged by the beauty and cosmetics industries, which are eyeing ever-younger customers — and shifting expectations of what a person looks like at 30, 40, 50 and beyond in the process. Some dermatologists promote “baby Botox” or “prejuvenation” procedures, which have ballooned in popularity among customers in their 20s and 30s. Skin care companies are targeting even younger demographics: According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, Bubble Skincare, a company that sells hydrating moisturizers and eye-brightening cream, works with about 2,000 13- and 14-year-old

JAMES ESTRIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES LAUREN PETRACCA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Joanna Patchett of Binghamton, N.Y., was feeling depressed about the direction of her life until she started a new career as a nurse, finding purpose treating Covid patients. It was also during the pandemic when Patrick Milando, preparing to fly in New Jersey, made a late-in-life pivot from professional musician to flight instructor.

Dr. Sandra Hazelip, above left, and Eleanor Hamby became social media sensations as they traveled the world, racking up over a million likes from thousands of followers. Far left, Lyn Slater, 70, a style influencer in New York, recounts her transformation in her book, “How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly From the Accidental Icon.” It’s Never Too Late ... CHRISTOPHER LEE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES AMIR HAMJA/THE NEW YORK TIMES LIVING WELL 9

LYN SLATER WILL be the first to tell you her life has been a series of happy accidents and purposeful metamorphoses. “Because I’m constantly reinventing myself, my life is always a surprise. I’m an improvisational person. I don’t plan. I’m very in the moment,” said Ms. Slater, 70, a former professor of social work at Fordham University in New York. “That thinking has served me well.” In 2014, she was taking a handful of creative classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. Her professor in a class on how to open a vintage clothing store suggested she start a fashion blog. Ms. Slater, who is from Dobbs Ferry in suburban Westchester County and moved to New York City in the mid-90s, thought, “Why not.” She had always had a passion and flair for style, and was often mistaken for being a part of the fashion industry. She thought she would focus on the blog and that theme. “I dressed in a way that people didn’t expect,” she explained. “I was very avantgarde, dressing in a minimalistic, black and white look. I wore Japanese designers from consignment shops — like Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto. I dressed in a way I felt, and to convey an identity.” After a fellow student in her class suggested she call herself the Accidental Icon, Ms. Slater took on the title and acquired a website and blog domain using that name. She posted three times a week, usually composing pieces introspectively about clothing and designers, and the integral role those two topics played in her life. Often she would wear an article of clothing and would write an essay “about the designer’s inspiration and how I felt wearing it,” she said. The accompanying photos were taken by her longtime partner, Calvin Lom, 66, a retired cyclotron engineer. (Today the pair live in Peekskill, N.Y.) A five-year stint as a sought-after fashion influencer — @iconaccidental on Instagram — was her next big career step. Then came the identity crisis and loss of self. Her triumphs, transformations and troubles, not to mention her truths, are recounted in her book, “How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly From the Accidental Icon.” “The book is a compilation of essays starting when I turned 60 in 2013 until the present time,” Ms. Slater said. “It’s a book about reinvention and things that I’ve learned. How I became an accidental icon, and experiences that happened to me. It culminates when I have this crisis of values.” HOW DID YOU GO FROM BEING A FULL-TIME SOCIAL WORKER TO THE ACCIDENTAL ICON? In 2014 I was doing very heavy work that focused on trauma, child and sexual abuse, and the child welfare system. I needed to do something creative, because for me, that’s life saving. Professors and people told me I had great style. When the blog suggestion came up, I wanted to dig into that. I was always interested in clothes and fashion. Clothes have always manifested who I want to be. I thought: “OK. I can do that. I know how to do a website.I can make this happen.” HOW DID YOU KNOW WHATTO FOCUS ON? There was a big hole for women my age, who were like me, urban, intellectual and invested in their life and career. The blog I wanted to write didn’t exist. I wanted to engage with a community of women who wanted to think and talk about fashion as a way to express identity. I never had a target market. YOU QUICKLY GAINED A LOT OF ATTENTION, ACCRUING ALMOST A MILLION FOLLOWERS ACROSS YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS. HOW DID THATTRANSPIRE? My writing was my authenticity. The blog really was my impulse to be a writer. I became more visible in the world. I transitioned from the blog to working predominantly on Instagram and doing sponsored posts. I got a Valentino campaign, then an international one with Mango, a Spanish brand geared toward a younger consumer. The fact that they featured me was groundbreaking. Then I got followers from all over To Become a Style Influencer 10 THE NEW YORK TIMES

CALVIN LOM ‘I was making a space where people who felt unheard and invisible were feeling, through me, seen.’ Lyn Slater in a kimono-style top and terra-cotta pants by the designer Recreo San Miguel.

LIVE MUSIC WAS no more. Patrick Milando could draw no other conclusion. But maybe he could pivot. It was a summer day in 2020, a peak of the coronavirus pandemic, and Mr. Milando, a French horn player, had been driving through a locked-down, emptied-out Times Square. Then 67, he had spent nearly a half-century as a professional musician, from the Metropolitan Opera to over a dozen years with “The Lion King.” Now that musical, along with so much else, had shuttered. At an age when his peers were wrapping up their work, Mr. Milando found himself pondering a new way to pay the bills — 5,000 feet above his old way. Mr. Milando had begun flying singleengine planes before the pandemic, but purely as a hobby. (He had logged around 300 hours of flight time.) Now, he wondered, the world. I signed with a modeling agency and got a literary agent. I got seen by fashion editors and started doing magazine shoots and music videos and modeling. BY 2019 YOU HAD A CRISIS. WHAT HAPPENED? I lost myself. I realized I was unhappy. Everything became very controlling. People tell you what they want you to post, how they want you to do your pictures, what they want you to say. That was not why I started this. I wanted to have a new adventure, meet new people, explore new fields and to express myself creatively. I lost the intimate community who were truly engaged. I was making a space where people who felt unheard and invisible were feeling, through me, seen. Younger women who were terrified of being old were saying I was helping them not be afraid of that. WHAT DID YOU LEARN? That you need equal amounts an analog life and a digital one. In the beginning, the blog allowed an older person to break into fashion. But after a time, it put me in a box, and that became oppressive. I’ve learned how living a digital life can change you. I got sucked in, and I started to compromise my values. I’ve learned how easy and seductive it is to lose yourself in all of this. HOW DID YOU RETURN TO YOUR CORE SELF? I went back to writing. I no longer spend great amounts of time on social media. I no longer do it for money. I now do it as I originally started out, which is through writing. I have a Substack that I engage with more than my social media. I have strong priorities, like putting my family, my home and my health before anything else. I continue to post because of the group of people that are engaged with me, and for whom my words are important to them, inspire them, comfort them, and make them feel good about themselves. ALIX STRAUSS To Make a Caree

AMIR HAMJA/THE NEW YORK TIMES er Change could he actually become a professional pilot? He was too old to fly for the major airlines (the cutoff is 65), but there was no age limit on teaching others to fly. Mr. Milando found a small flight school in New Jersey and set out to earn his commercial pilot certificate. The other pilots there tended to be decades younger, and not once did he spot a fellow French hornist. (Most seemed to work in computers, he observed.) But he felt at home; flying unlocked something in him. “There’s a freedom, an autonomy. You’re the master of your own destiny,” he said. Today Mr. Milando, 71, has two careers — it turns out the death of live music had been greatly exaggerated. He splits his time between the orchestra pit and the friendly skies, where he teaches budding pilots like he himself once was. HOW DID YOU GET INTERESTED IN FLYING? Being a musician, I did a lot of traveling. I was very intrigued by the flying aspect. I got a flight simulator game for fun, when my kids were young. You’d hear me in the basement yelling, “Pull up, pull up!” When I turned 60, my wife got me flying lessons. From there, I got my private pilot’s license. WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT FLYING? It’s very serene. One of the most enjoyable times is when you’re going through the clouds, and you’re relying on your instruments training, then all of a sudden you’re above the clouds and you have this beautiful panorama in front of you. The first time you do it, it’s life-changing. Life-changing and life-affirming. IT SEEMS RISKIER THAN PLAYING THE HORN. WAS IT EVER SCARY? The scariest was landing for the first time. I remember I had an opera down in West Palm Beach, and I’m up there with my instructor at 1,500 feet, looking down at the tarmac, thinking: Well, I just have to land this plane. Afterward, I felt like I was going to cry. It was just so intense, and amazing. WHAT PROMPTED YOU TO THINK ABOUT FLYING PROFESSIONALLY? When the pandemic came, all of us musicians were like, “Oh my God, what are we going to do?” The prevailing feeling was that music was going to stop; Broadway was never going to come back. I remember driving one day through ‘There’s a freedom, an autonomy. You’re the master of your own destiny.’ LIVING WELL 11

ToTravel the WoTimes Square and seeing everything boarded up. It was really scary and I thought, OK, let’s just try career No. 2. I’m not one to sit around and do nothing. SO HOW DID YOU MAKE IT HAPPEN? I found this small flight school in New Jersey, called Sky Training, and got my commercial rating. Then I flew to Minnesota later that summer to get my certified instructor’s rating, so I could teach other people to fly. I also picked up a seaplane rating, just for the heck of it. Eventually I flew a seaplane over Lake Como in Italy and was waving down to — who is it that lives there? George Clooney? Anyway, now I teach people to fly everything from a single-engine Cessna to a multi-engine Piper. ARETHERE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN MUSIC AND FLYING? My success as a musician has always come when I’m focused in the moment. When you put aside all the extraneous things going on around you. That’s sort of what you have to do when you’re flying an airplane. As a teacher, I’ve had a student freeze 100 feet from the runway. I had to push his hands off the controls and take them. He was in a mental freeze, couldn’t get out of it. You always have to be in the moment. HOW OFTEN DO YOU FLY NOW? That’s the tricky part because I’m responsible for eight shows a week at “The Lion King.” Monday is dark, so I usually pack the day with students, and just keeping current on flying different airplanes. Then I’ll usually hire someone to play for me another day that week, and teach more people. So I end up flying maybe 15 hours a week. ANY ADVICE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE INTERESTED IN MAKING A CHANGE LIKETHIS, BUT WORRY THEY’RETOO OLD TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW? I say go for it. There’s no reason not to. CHRIS COLIN Dr. Sandra Hazelip and Eleanor Hamby met over 20 years ag12 THE NEW YORK TIMES

CHRISTOPHER LEE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES WHEN ELEANOR HAMBY and Dr. Sandra Hazelip met more than two decades ago, it was best friends at first sight. They never imagined that, one day, their friendship would be featured on news shows, get joked about on “Saturday Night Live” and stop people in their tracks in a Tokyo train station to exclaim, “Oh my God, you’re the TikTok traveling grannies!” Ms. Hamby and Dr. Hazelip have inspired people all over the globe with their project “Around the World in 80 Days: At 81 and Still on the Run,” named in homage to Jules Verne’s 19th-century adventure novel. Their travels last year took them from the icy shores of Antarctica to the rocky majesty of the Grand Canyon, and racked up more than a million likes from thousands of followers along the way. “We totally, totally were not expecting this,” Ms. Hamby said. The women first crossed paths in their late 50s at a Christian medical mission in Zambia where Ms. Hamby, a documentary photographer, was the director and Dr. Hazelip, a recent widow, had come as a visiting physician. Five years later, Ms. Hamby’s husband also died, unexpectedly. Dr. Hazelip was looking to move her medical practice to Abilene, Texas, where Ms. Hamby lived, but didn’t want to fully relocate. So, Dr. Hazelip made her friend an offer. “She said, ‘If you’ll give me a bed two nights a week, I’ll take you out to eat,’” Ms. Hamby recalled. It was during those weekly visits that they discovered a shared love of travel. “One day, I said: Ellie, I’ve always wanted to ride the trans-Siberian train. Do you think that’s something we could go on as a trip together?” Dr. Hazelip recalled. That was their first big adventure, in 2008, and trips to Southeast Asia and the Middle East followed in 2010 and 2011. On their first few trips, the pair used a blog to keep their friends and family updated. For the 80-day tour, a friend helped them set up accounts on Instagram and TikTok, and soon thousands of followers around the world were along for the ride. “People kept saying how much we were orld With Your Best Friend go on a medical mission in Zambia.

an inspiration — an inspiration for a good friendship, an inspiration to get out and do things,” Ms. Hamby said. The whole experience “has definitely been a life changer.” And they’re not stopping. HOW DID YOU PLAN YOUR 80-DAY TRIP AROUND THE WORLD? ELEANOR HAMBY: Well, we started with the book: “Around the World in 80 Days,” by Jules Verne. DR. SANDRA HAZELIP: We wanted to go to as many cities as the protagonist, Phileas Fogg, supposedly went to on his trip. We also knew that we definitely wanted to go to all seven continents; he didn’t do that. And then we wanted to see as many wonders or natural wonders of the world as we could. HAMBY: In the end, we wound up going to 18 countries, and eight wonders. Sandy made a Word document for every single day of the trip. We always start with accommodations, figuring out where in a city we want to stay, because location is No. 1. We really just need a place that’s clean, because we don’t spend a whole lot of time in the hotel. And then we look for the best price. We love to find these gem little hotels, like where we stayed in Cairo: $13.50 a person a night. It wasn’t a typical place most tourists would stay — we had to get to it in the alley — but we had a million-dollar view on the rooftop. We take pride in the budget. HAZELIP: People will say, “I wish I could afford a trip.” I say, “Well, you bought a new car last year.I went around the world in 80 days.” HAMBY: If there’s a big, exciting thing we know we want to do, like snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef, we’ll ask the hotel to recommend a company and book that in advance, too. The rest, we leave it up to the locals to tell us. WASTRAVEL ALWAYS A BIG PART OF YOUR LIVES? HAMBY: I grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, in a very rural area, and I really did not travel at all. But I was constantly reading about people like Amelia Earhart or books by authors like Pearl S. Buck. I just had a real interest in any woman who was exploring. My husband and I married when I was 18, and after we finished college we made a real budget trip to Mexico City. That was the beginning, because we figured out we didn’t have to be wealthy to travel, and we could enjoy it. HAZELIP: My husband and I, our travels were basically to family reunions in Kentucky or to visit grandparents. Our first real trip, after our children were grown, was a Caribbean cruise. That was so much fun, but it was also much more my husband’s form of vacation. HAMBY: Sandy and I are not cruise people. We like to travel to meet the locals, not other tourists. HAZELIP: Shortly before my husband got sick, he planted a seed in my heart to start taking our grandsons on mission trips in the Dr. Hazelip displays key rings from her trip to Nepal with Ms. Hamby. At 81 years old, the pair traveled from the icy shores of Antarctica to the rocky majesty of the Grand Canyon, in 80 days.

summertime. And so, after he died, when I learned about Zambia Medical Mission,I decided to go on that trip and take a grandson. That’s how Ellie and I became acquainted. And the travel has just exploded since. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT TRAVELING TOGETHER? HAMBY: Sandy hugs everyone — not just a little casual hug, a good hug — and she’s always smiling. I really like that about her. I’ve never been a hugger; my family can tell you that. It’s not my psyche. But Sandy has taught me to be more open with people. It’s been really beautiful to see how people all over the world needed Sandy’s hug. HAZELIP: Ellie has taught me that it’s very important to be at the right place at sunup and sundown so you can get the right light for that good picture. And she’s just so fun. HAMBY: We were just fortunate that we crossed paths and came into each other’s lives when we did. When you lose a spouse, it’s very difficult, and it’s wonderful to have a friend that has had the same experience and understands how to be a friend to someone when that happens. A strong friendship is really crucial to the grieving process. HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO YOUR FAMILIES WHEN THEY WORRY ABOUT YOUR EMBARKING ON THESE BIG TRIPS OR SAY, ‘GRANDMA, ARE YOU SURE YOU WANTTO BETRAIPSING AROUND LAPLAND OR BALI ON YOUR OWN?’ HAZELIP: I can run circles around you, kid. On artificial knees. HAMBY: We tell everyone: “We did not go on a vacation. We went on an adventure.” And we never missed a day; we were either on an adventure, or we were flying. That’s why not too many people will travel with us. My kids like to relax at the beach. They want to stay at more expensive hotels. HAZELIP: That’s not an adventure for us. WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN DREAMING OF AN ADVENTURE LIKE YOURS? HAZELIP: Get up out of your easy chair. Step out of your comfort zone. Make some plans and live. HAMBY: Age is only a number. If you think you want to try something, don’t be afraid to step out. Do it. Because you’re going to regret if you don’t, and you will never regret if you do. WHAT HAVE YOUR TRAVELSTAUGHT YOU? HAMBY: Trust in people, because they’re basically good. Just reach out and smile. Seriously, a smile will bring friendship. It will open doors. It will knock down that barrier or make that person more likely to help when you have a problem. I guarantee you’re going to have a much happier trip and you’re going to meet a whole lot more people if you’re smiling. JENNIFER HARLAN CHRISTOPHER LEE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES LIVING WELL 13

even though Ms. Patchett disagreed. “I didn’t think I was equipped for that experience, or that I could handle it spiritually and emotionally,” she said. But over the past several years, that’s exactly where she found herself, despite the 12-hour shifts, the daily emergencies and the often harrowing emotional work. “To lose patients I’d become close to and have them die in such a devastating way made me question everything,” she said. “But I began to see this work as my duty. It was a war. I wasn’t going to let them die alone.” SINCE, ON YOUR FIRST NURSING JOB, YOU UNEXPECTEDLY FOUND YOURSELF ASSIGNED TO THE I.C.U. FLOOR AND CARING FOR COVID PATIENTS, DID YOU EVER REGRET YOUR DECISION TO BECOME A NURSE? No. I never regretted this work or being here, even though it was terrifying. If anything, I found my calling. I wasn’t afraid to be the person watching someone die, or being with them when they were. I was good To Become a Nurse JOANNA PATCHETT HAS always had a fear of death, and the dying. “I was terrified of being responsible for people’s lives, and was frightened of the space between life and death,” she said. And yet in July 2020, as coronavirus cases filled up hospitals, Ms. Patchett, who was fresh out of nursing school, found herself caring for extremely ill Covid patients in the intensive care unit at Binghamton General Hospital in upstate New York. “Seeing how sick everyone was — was heartbreaking. It was a life-changing and extremely difficult experience,” said Ms. Patchett, a 39-year-old Binghamton resident. “I didn’t expect to see so many people dying in quick succession, or to be on a floor full of ventilated patients, or intubating people so frequently, or being their primary person to have contact with them when the rest of the world could not.” Ms. Patchett had dreamed of becoming an actress, but didn’t have much luck at the profession. In 2019, when she was 35, she went back to school, having been accepted into a one-year accelerated nursing program. Most of her classmates came to nursing straight out of college, and many fondly called her Mom. As the pandemic worsened, she was deeply moved by “how people would open up and be so vulnerable with us.” Ms. Patchett never imagined her life would turn out this way. After getting a bachelor’s degree in English and drama from Ithaca College, she spent a decade feeling “lost and depressed,” bouncing from one job to another — teaching English and yoga, working in a dental office. She felt behind in life because she didn’t know what she wanted to do. “I knew I had something to give, but didn’t know what that was,” she said. “I was jealous of people who challenged themselves,” Ms. Patchett said. “I never had. If I was going to grow and find myself, I needed to try something scary. I had to take a risk and challenge myself.” It was her mother who cajoled her into nursing, sensing she’d be good in the field, 14 THE NEW YORK TIMES

LAUREN PETRACCA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES at being present as they passed, and I could work under a tremendous amount of stress. HOW DID YOU FIND THE STRENGTH TO FACE YOUR FEARS? I didn’t have a choice. You can’t run away from this kind of work. I found my ability to be challenged, and then I found the strength to stay. I didn’t have the luxury of leaving sick people, nor did I want to. Someone had to be there. I knew it had to be me. ONCE YOU WERE ACCEPTED INTO A NURSING PROGRAM, YOU REALIZED YOU WERE ONE OFTHE OLDEST PEOPLE ATTENDING. WHAT WASTHAT LIKE? I felt out of place. Most everyone was 20, 25-year-olds, pursuing nursing shortly after getting their first degree. They were bubbly. I didn’t feel part of that excited buzz. But Gen Z is a welcoming group. They didn’t have the judgment that was inside of me. Once we broke into clinical groups, we became very tight and depended on each other. We shared a lot of intense moments that gave me strength because we supported one another. AFTER 18 MONTHS OF FIGHTING TO SAVE COVID PATIENTS, YOU DECIDED TO SWITCH TO PALLIATIVE CARE. WHY? I burned out. I realized I had to move to another part of nursing. On the I.C.U. floor, I’d received a tutelage in death. I wanted to help people control their death, rather than watch people die flailing and gasping. When we seemed out of the woods for Covid, I started helping the elderly and those with terminal illnesses decide how they wanted to die. I’m now a hospice nurse case manager at Lourdes Hospice, an outpatient home end-of-life care provider, in Vestal, N.Y., where I interact with 20 to 30 families a week. And I’m part of deeper discussions that deal with the dignity of dying. WHAT’STHE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE YOU CAN OFFER? When it comes to changing your life, you sometimes have to decide to change. Once you do, almost anything is possible. Everything you do contributes to who you are now. Ironically, my yoga, acting and teaching training gave me the ability to stay grounded, present and in the moment. Not one part of your journey, even if you’re not sure what you’re doing, or where it’s going to lead you, is ever wasted. You’re never late; you’ve simply not arrived yet. ALIX STRAUSS ‘I wanted to help people control their death, rather than watch people die flailing and gasping.’

What Is the Ideal Retirement AgAmericans’ average life expectancy is 76 now. We asked experts when tBy Dana G. Smith ‘If you’re leaving a job that is physically bad for you, where you are getting terrible sleep and you’re constantly stressed out, then retirement is great for your health.’ IN 1881, THE conservative German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, plagued by a rise in socialist ideology, proposed a national retirement benefit to appease the leftist masses. He set the retirement age at 70. Average life expectancy at the time? About 40 years. Von Bismarck resigned shortly after the policy passed, but his legacy remained, and Germany’s retirement benefit (which was lowered to age 65 in 1916) became the model for many other nations. When President Roosevelt established the Social Security Act of 1935, 65 was similarly chosen as the national retirement age, despite the fact that less than 60 percent of American adults lived that long. Which is all to say, the national retirement age in the U.S. and elsewhere has origins in a bit of political smoke and mirrors; it began as a symbolic offering, accessible only to the those who survived well into old age. Today though, many more people live long enough to have access to a national retirement fund. Average life expectancy in the United States is 76, and in many European countries it’s even higher. The U.S. national retirement age — when you can start claiming full Social Security benefits — has crept up more gradually, to 67 for people born after 1960. In response, several countries have debated raising the retirement age to try to offset the economic pressures of an aging population and the concern that national retirement benefits won’t be able to keep up. Most notoriously, France, where life expectancy is 82, raised the retirement age to 64 from 62 last year, leading to wide protests. From an economic standpoint, a later retirement age perhaps benefits everyone’s bottom line. But putting finances aside, what are the mental and physical implications of raising a national retirement age? We asked experts to weigh in. WORKING-LIFE EXPECTANCY One way to answer this is to look at changes not in life span but in health-span — the number of years people are healthy and disability-free. Think of it as your work-span. Gal Wettstein, a senior research economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, looked at age and potential for employment in a study about people’s working life expectancy. He found that Americans who are healthy at age 50 can expect to have roughly 23 more years free of disability, plus about eight years living with disability. That would suggest people’s maximum working life expectancy, on average, is age 73. “There’s no doubt that life expectancy is PABLO AMARGO

LIVING WELL 15 SENIOR LIVING ge for Your Health? they think people should stop working. ty and social interactions that come with leaving work are largely to blame for postretirement declines. RETIREMENT EQUITY While some people stay sharp and continue to work into their 80s, other jobs are more physically demanding and take a toll on people’s health. “There are people who do manual labor where at age 65, they really cannot continue to do this very challenging work,” Dr. Cohen said. “Their need to retire needs to be respected.” For these types of work, retirement can actually improve health outcomes, Dr. Renzi-Hammond said. “If you’re leaving a job that is physically bad for you, where you are getting terrible sleep and you’re constantly stressed out, then retirement is great for your health.” Life span and health-span are also not consistent across race and gender, both because of the type of work certain demographics are more likely to take part in, and the toll chronic stress from discrimination takes on the body. In his research, Dr. Wettstein found that, at age 50, Black men have a working life expectancy of approximately 17 years, while white women could continue working for 24 years. “There is an equity concern there, both on the life expectancy side, and also on the working-life expectancy side,” Dr. Wettstein said. “We know that Black Americans, particularly, develop illness at earlier ages, live with more disabilities, die younger,” said Dr. Lisa Cooper, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. “So not allowing them to retire until they’re older means they’re just not going to benefit from” Social Security as much. This is also true for people from lower income brackets and those who work in physically intense jobs, she added. As a result, Dr. Cooper said, “Raising the retirement age needs to be done with all of these issues in mind, because it’s not going to affect everyone the same.” longer, and also the ability to work has expanded,” Dr. Wettstein said. “Part of that is medical changes, and part of that is the nature of work has changed.” In 2020, roughly 45 percent of the American labor force worked in a knowledge-based field, such as management, business and finance, education and health care. In 1935, these types of professions accounted for just 6 percent of the work force. Dr. Pinchas Cohen, dean of the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California, agreed that, from a health standpoint for people in these fields, a retirement age under 65 “makes no sense.” “Even 65 is a 20th century number,” he said. For people working in knowledge-based jobs, a retirement age in the 70s is reasonable from a cognitive perspective, too, said Lisa Renzi-Hammond, director of the Institute of Gerontology at the University of Georgia. “Our cognitive faculties we’re able to maintain, usually, pretty well into our 70s,” she said. “If retirement age is set based on the capabilities or competence of employees, there’s absolutely no reason to have a retirement age in the 60s.” Parts of the brain — most notably the prefrontal cortex, which is critical for executive functioning, attention and working memory — do start to lose volume as early as around age 45, but other areas are able to compensate, Dr. Renzi-Hammond said. And other aspects of cognition, such as crystallized intelligence (accumulated knowledge that can be applied to new situations) and social cognition (behaving appropriately in interpersonal interactions), continue to improve for decades. Many of these cognitive processes are maintained and strengthened by staying in the work force. Consequently, some people decline mentally and physically when they stop working. One study even found that delaying retirement was associated with a decreased risk of death, regardless of health before retirement. Experts speculate that the losses of job-related physical activi-

16 THE NEW YORK TIMES SENIOR LIVING MakeTime to Review Your FinanEven before retirement comes, take an annual look at how well you are pBy Brian J. O’Connor WITH ANOTHER YEAR of tax paperwork now behind you, it might be a good time to catch up to another important financial chore: your annual retirement review. Whether you’re still on the job or have stopped working and are already collecting Social Security, this is an opportunity to take stock of where your retirement is heading with a full year of income, investment and personal spending to review, as well as a momentarily fresh perspective on how you want to spend the last phase of your life, and the costs that go with it. About four million people are expected to turn 65 this year, according to an analysis of census data by the Alliance for Lifetime Income, a nonprofit research arm of the annuity industry. Nearly all of them will need to support themselves for decades. Regardless of whether you are retired yet, reviewing your retirement plan and how it’s shaping up when compared with reality is a crucial step, said Michael Crews, author of the book “Saturday Everyday” and chief executive of North Texas Wealth Management in Allen, Texas. “Most people have never been retired, and if you’ve never been retired, the learning curve is steep,” Mr. Crews said. “People think the goal is to get to retirement, but that’s only half the goal. The goal is to get to retirement and not run out of money.” Here are a few main areas you will want to review. WHAT ARE YOU SPENDING? With your tax documents in hand, along with annual reports from your credit cards, you can see how much you have in after-tax income and how much you are spending, so “you can figure out where your money is going each month,” said Bill Dendy, president of Alicorn Investment Management in Dallas. Those numbers are the key to planning the income you will need in retirement and, once you’ve stopped working, determining whether your spending is in line with your budget. One common piece of advice is that retirees need only about 80 percent of the income they had when they were working. But in the early years of retirement, people will often indulge plans for travel or make large purchases, like a boat or recreational vehicle, and end up spending as much or more as they did when they were still working. “With inflation, costs are higher, and some people may realize that the number

ncial Position prepared for it. they budgeted as the perfect number for retirement is too low,” Mr. Dendy said. CHECK YOUR INVESTMENTS Beyond reviewing the performance of your investments, it’s a good time to examine your asset allocation to make sure that your money is diversified so that you can avoid carrying too much risk. After a big year for stocks — the S&P 500 ended 2023 up 24.23 HANNAH AGOSTA 4 million The number of Americans who will turn 65 this year. 8% The increase in benefits each year for those who delay receiving Social Security.

percent, and has continued to climb in 2024 — investors will want to make sure that their money isn’t overly concentrated in equities before a market downturn hits. They should also consider whether their mix of investments carries an appropriate level of volatility and risk for people near or in retirement. “People wait to make adjustments until we have a major market correction, which is the worst time to make a change,” Mr. Dendy said, because that translates into real losses. “That’s OK when you’re 30, but when you’re 70, that’s a challenge.” Investors who started with an appropriately diversified portfolio will also want to check whether their holdings need to be rebalanced to their original investment plan. Some large brokerages offer automatic rebalancing that can be set up online. SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE Three to five years before you retire, look at different strategies for collecting Social Security, such as claiming spousal benefits, which can include claims against a former spouse’s benefits if you were married for at least 10 years. The age to collect full benefits is between 66 and 67 for people born after 1954. For those who delay collecting benefits, the monthly amount increases by 8 percent a year until age 70. Coordinating benefits with a spouse can get complicated. There are online calculators, including those at the Social Security Administration’s website, and a few paid online services; a call to the agency or a financial planner can help, too. “You need someone who can run those numbers for you and discuss the pros and cons,” said Daphne Jordan, a senior wealth adviser with the Pioneer Wealth Management Group in Austin, Texas, and the chairwoman of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors. “People also may not know the logistics of Medicare and that there can be a penalty if you don’t enroll on time, and whether you’re working or not.” WHAT’S YOUR TAX SITUATION? How you structure withdrawals from retirement accounts, when you collect pension payments and Social Security benefits, and whether you earn any income from working or other sources can have major consequences for your retirement. The bottom line is that the less you pay in taxes, the longer you can make your nest egg last. Many would-be retirees don’t realize that about half of all Social Security recipients are taxed on their benefits and that earnings above a certain threshold can result in monthly Medicare surcharges that, at the highest income level, can bring a premium to $594 a month. If you turn 73 this year, you’ll also face taxes on your required minimum distributions (R.M.D.s) from tax-deferred retirement accounts, including individual retirement accounts and 401(k)s. Some retirees might benefit from taking the tax hit that comes from transferring tax-deferred money in a traditional I.R.A. or 401(k) to a Roth I.R.A., which makes all future withdrawals tax free. Retirees younger than 73 might want to delay Social Security and pension payments early in retirement in order to deplete I.R.A.s and other accounts before R.M.D.s kick in. Still another strategy is to send R.M.D. payments directly to charity if you don’t need the income, which can cut your tax bill. In all cases, you’ll need to decide whether to have income tax withheld from Social Security, pension payments and account withdrawals or to make quarterly estimated tax payments. In short: If you think taxes are complicated when you’re working, just wait until you’re retired. “It’s important to have somebody calculate your tax projections before you start taking money out of your accounts,” Ms. Jordan said. “There are going to be tax considerations.” WHAT ARE YOUR INSURANCE NEEDS? During your working years, carrying a hefty

LIVING WELL 17 ‘You need someone who can run those numbers for you and discuss the pros and cons.’ amount of term life insurance — enough to pay off your mortgage and other debts and to carry your loved ones for at least a year — is a prudent financial move. Once you and your partner are in retirement, that coverage can become unnecessary. “Once you’re retired, the house may be paid off, and there’s not the same level of income loss if you die,” Mr. Dendy said. “But now it might make sense to convert a life insurance policy to a long-term care policy, although that won’t make sense for a single person. Long-term care can make sense for a couple, but it’s a real shopping event to get the best long-term coverage for your situation.” Many single retirees can go without longterm care because they don’t run the risk of spending down all their assets and leaving a spouse nearly destitute. With long-term care costs topping $100,000 a year for those without Medicaid coverage, another option is to consider life insurance or annuities that offer that coverage as a rider. Some combat veterans can qualify for long-term care coverage under the Aid and Attendance benefits paid by the Department of Veterans Affairs, although the process of claiming those benefits can be complicated. HAVE A DIGITAL ESTATE PLAN As you get close to or enter retirement, it’s a good time to take a comprehensive inventory of what you own, where those assets are held and how your family members or friends can find that information. In addition to investment and bank accounts, pensions, insurance policies, trusts, annuities, deeds, titles and other documents, you’ll also need to compile a list of account user names, websites and passwords. Taking pictures or videos of the contents of your home, including jewelry and other valuables, is a good way to catalog your assets. You’ll also need a durable power of attorney (to manage finances) and a health care power of attorney (to make medical decisions), a health care privacy document, any end-of-life directives, an updated will and any appropriate trusts. “It’s a good time to look at your estate plan and to check the beneficiaries on your retirement and financial accounts, as well as insurance policies,” Ms. Jordan said. For example, if a former spouse is still listed as the beneficiary on an old bank or 401(k) workplace account, that money passes directly to that person, even if you remarried. “If you’re older, this is a good time to think about whether your children know about your estate plans and where all those documents are located.” IS YOUR PLAN REALLY A PLAN? “People say, ‘I’m going to work forever,’ but what happens if you’re diagnosed with something,” said Mr. Crews of North Texas Wealth Management. “That’s having no plan.” While many people can handle retirement saving and investing during their working years, the myriad considerations for investing, taxes, health care, benefits, insurance and more in retirement can be beyond the capabilities of even a successful do-it-yourselfer. While not everyone needs a financial adviser to manage it, even an occasional meeting with a fee-only financial or retirement planner can be helpful. Planners caution that people can become so focused on the intimidating and complicated financial aspects of retirement that they never consider what their retirement goals, priorities and lifestyle should be. “The biggest thing that people miss is the goal setting and lifestyle for retirement,” Mr. Crews added. “In retirement, you still have to figure out what’s really important to you. And people just aren’t having those conversations.”

WHEN RESIDENTS AT Sun City Center, a sprawling retirement community in West Central Florida, struggle with their electronics, many of them now know who to call on: Maria Hodge, one of the newer residents, and also one of the youngest. Since moving to this 55-plus community in 2022, Ms. Hodge, 59, has become a fixture among the nearly 11,500 residents, where the average age is 79. She cooks a weekly lunch for the volunteer EMT team. She serves as secretary of the synchronized swim team. She regularly dons a name badge and rides her golf cart over to the community information center to give tours to prospective new residents, gushing about its dance hall and fitness center, its art studios and woodcarving rooms, and its dozens of unique neighborhoods clustered around gardens and 90 small lakes. But one of her favorite activities these days is tech support. “We have people here who still have what we call the dino-phone,” she said. “They still have flip phones. And most of the women on my swim team are challenged when it comes to electronics.” Ms. Hodge, a native of Cherry Hill, N.J., never imagined she’d settle in a retirement community before her 60th birthday, but here she is, a snowbird living in a community of people old enough to be her parents. There are thousands of 55-plus communities scattered across the United States, with the majority clustered in Florida and the Southwest. Unlike assisted living and nursing homes, 55-plus communities offer older Americans an option to purchase traditional single-family homes but tap into a built-in network of friendship, extracurricular activities and an active, age-appropriate lifestyle that fits their needs as they enter 18 THE NEW YORK TIMES SENIOR LIVING People here see me and they’re like: ‘This is energy. This is great.’ At 59, She’s the New Kid on the BA New Jersey native finds her place in a Florida retirement community wBy Debra Kamin

Block where the average age is 79. SCOT T MCINTYRE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Maria Hodge, left, one of the youngest residents at Sun City Center, a 55-plus community near Tampa, Florida, where travel is by golf cart. Below right, Ms. Hodge chatting with potential residents in one of the craft studios. retirement. In general, they require at least one member of a household to be 55 years old or older, and nearly all are governed by a homeowners’ association that collects dues to cover the costs of activities, community events and facilities. Such communities also offer a major incentive: cheaper real estate. An agerestricted pool of buyers creates less competition, so homes tend to be priced below market value, and Sun City Center is no exception. The median home price was $320,000 in September 2023, according to Realtor.com, while the median for houses in nearby Tampa was $409,500. Sun City Center — with its grocery stores, retail shops, churches, a synagogue, a hospital and golf carts that can be legally driven on its roads — is one of the largest 55-plus communities in the country. Ms. Hodge and her husband, Tim Hodge, 64, bought a two-bedroom single-family house with a den there for $375,000 in June 2022, after only seeing it online. But they were ready to move south, pushed by the pandemic. In 2020, they were living in rural Pennsylvania in a 4,000-square-foot house abutting 98 acres of protected land, and the isolation, in lockdown, was crushing. Mr. Hodge, who worked as a systems engineer and manager at Lockheed Martin for 40 years, had retired and got used to staying home, while Ms. Hodge, who worked in restaurant sales and catering, was still at it, often putting in 15-hour days to arrange deliveries and catering services for clients while the pandemic raged. “My husband looked at me one day and said: ‘What are we doing? You’re never home. You’re exhausted all the time,’” Ms. Hodge said. Several months into the pandemic, the couple traveled to Florida to visit friends and felt a significant cultural difference. They liked it. “In Pennsylvania, it was militant lockdown,” Ms. Hodge said. “We got to Florida and it was super loose. It was culture shock after living under a regime of ‘You’re not going anywhere, you’re not doing anything.’” Research shows that loneliness is directly correlated to poor health outcomes, particularly in older populations, said Denise Rousseau, a professor of organizational behavior at Carnegie Mellon University. “If you were living in a place with close friends and ties, senior living doesn’t necessarily offer you something better,” she said. “But for many people who are isolated, senior living is very attractive.” That was certainly true for the Hodges, who were drawn to the idea of being surrounded not just by sunshine but also by social activities. They began to seriously discuss the idea of moving to Florida for good. And they knew that if they were going to pack up and head south, they wanted to do so as two retirees (Ms. Hodge still puts in a few hours a week doing restaurant consulting remotely). Mr. Hodge was eager to leave the cold winters of the Northeast behind him. Ms. Hodge, an avid Disney fan, was intrigued by the prospect of living close enough to Disney World to visit on a regular basis. Both were curious about Sun City Center’s

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SCOT T MCINTYRE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES LIVING WELL 19 light bulbs in the lampposts that illuminate Sun City Center’s streets at night. He enjoys spending long days at home, lounging on the sofa with Ginger. Ms. Hodge, in the meantime, puts in 20 hours a week with her synchronized swim team, where she is the youngest member (the oldest is 94). She can now rattle off most of the clubs and organizations of Sun City Center by heart, and she has made friends — even though most are at least a decade older than her. “Some of my friends are really old — it’s like, oh, this person’s in their 70s, they’re not going to be around as long as me,” she said. She has made peace with it, and learned to enjoy her position in the community. “People here see me and they’re like, ‘This is energy. This is great,’” Ms. Hodge said. “I don’t really see myself here with the residents, but it’s also super rewarding to teach the older crew how to get stuff done in a different way. It makes me feel younger.” dozens of clubs and organizations, which include lawn bowling, chess, Bible study, chorus and pickleball. The couple, who share six grown children, sold their house in Pennsylvania in June 2022 for $525,000, with plans to downsize. They might have gone too far, they admitted. The new Sun City house is 1,700 square feet, and they said it feels small. “My husband and I jokingly say we live in a hovel,” Ms. Hodge said. They share the space with their dog, Ginger, a Bichon-Yorkie mix, and after moving in, they spent $100,000 on a renovation that involved new quartz countertops and the installation of custom closets, plus an additional $100,000 for an in-ground pool that fills their screened-in porch and offers a lakeside view. They’ve established a rhythm — Mr. Hodge loves to race radio-controlled cars and volunteers with a group called the Lamplighters, who help residents replace

SENIOR LIVING Mortgage Debt After 65: ‘No-BraOlder Americans are delaying paying off the house to keep their liquiditBy Martha C. White CONVENTIONAL WISDOM DICTATES that retiring with debt — especially a debt as significant as a mortgage — is financially dicey at best and potentially ruinous at worst. That’s not how Brian Lindmeier sees it. “It just doesn’t make any sense at all to pay off the house,” he said. Mr. Lindmeier, 80, a retired purchasing and inventory manager, and his wife, Cindy, who retired from the local public school system, refinanced their home in Orange, Calif., at the end of 2020. They rolled over their balance into a new 30-year loan and slashed their interest rate in half to below 3 percent. He called the move a “no-brainer.” “The money I’d have to take out of my savings or out of my investments is yielding higher interest than the interest I’m paying on the loan,” Mr. Lindmeier said. For a growing number of older Americans, signing up for a mortgage that is likely to outlive them makes good economic sense. A significant percentage of homeowners have fixed-rate mortgages with historically low rates. Roughly six of 10 mortgage borrowers in the third quarter of last year held loans with interest rates of less than 4 percent, according to the online real estate brokerage Redfin. Nearly a quarter had rates of less than 3 percent. A campaign of rate increases by the Federal Reserve, which is intended to tamp down inflation, has driven yields that investors can get on ultrasafe instruments like certificates of deposit to 5 percent or higher. Even those who have spent years saving with the intention of paying off their mortgages with a lump sum at retirement are now finding themselves recalculating. Some are determining that those funds would be better deployed by earning returns on other investments or helping them meet their cash flow needs for everyday expenses. Eric Zittel, chief lending officer at Financial Partners Credit Union in Downey, Calif., said a number of his members, including Mr. Lindmeier, are keeping their mortgages — and their cash. “They’re realizing they can get a 4.5 percent to 5 percent rate just for a C.D. When you do the math, it makes a lot more sense for them to keep those funds.” A number of financial advisers and retirement planners argue that the imperative to pay off a mortgage before retirement is an outdated axiom. “While paying off a debt feels like a very conservative, secure move, trading your liquidity for a paid-off mortgage is quite risky,” said Evan Beach, president of Exit 59 Advisory, a wealth management firm focusing on retirement-income planning in Alexandria, Va. “You’re giving up money in your pocket that you may actually need for something else.” Gary Jacobs, a client of Mr. Beach’s and a retired federal employee, and his wife, Donna, a retired nurse, refinanced the mortgage on their home in Chevy Chase, Md., at the end of 2021 when mortgage rates were at a historic trough. “Timing is everything, and we timed it 20 THE NEW YORK TIMES

ainer’ or Big Risk? ty, but there are downsides. JAMES HILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES ‘You’re giving up money in your pocket that you may actually need for something else.’ just right this time,” Mr. Jacobs, 79, said. Refinancing into a new 30-year mortgage at a rate roughly half of their previous interest rate lowered the couple’s monthly payment by around $300. “We didn’t feel like drawing down on our cash reserves in order to pay the mortgage off,” Mr. Jacobs said, adding that paying off the mortgage would have taken about half of their savings. “We’re conservative in the sense of wanting to be prepared for eventualities where we might need the cash.” This dynamic is one factor driving historically large percentages of older Americans to carry mortgage debt into their senior years, according to a report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. In 2022, researchers found that just over 40 percent of homeowners older than 64 had a mortgage, a jump from roughly 25 percent a generation ago. Ultralow mortgage rates were a big driver of the increase, said Jennifer Molinsky, project director of the center’s housing and aging society program. But Ms. Molinsky expressed concern that the increase came in tandem with an overall rising debt load among seniors. Retirees on fixed incomes may struggle to manage higher-interest and variable-rate debt like outstanding credit card balances. In a worst-case scenario, if a health crisis or the death of a spouse destabilizes their life or their finances, older Americans could be at risk of losing their homes. “Homeownership can sometimes become challenging, because when people enter their retirement years, they often see a decrease in income,” said Lori Trawinski, director of finance and employment for the AARP Public Policy Institute. While the recent run-up in home prices has given homeowners more equity on paper, this can pose a challenge since those higher valuations can lead to higher property taxes and insurance premiums. Some experts in elder finance and policy point out that because a mortgage is almost always the biggest component of a homeowner’s monthly expenses, homeowners Gary and Donna Jacobs during a February trip to Paris. They refinanced their mortgage in late 2021, cutting their interest rate in half and saving hundreds a month.

in their 50s and 60s have less resilience to absorb a financial hit like an unexpected job loss or caregiving demands. “Housing is the biggest chunk of that budget for everybody, so it’s undoubtedly more expensive on a month-to-month basis to have a mortgage than to have a home that’s paid off,” said Beth Truesdale, a research fellow at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. She said that her research indicates that only about half of American workers remain employed throughout their 50s. This suggests that an income-reducing event is more common than many people expect. While the drop in labor force participation is more pronounced among women and less-educated workers, the employment rate drops by about 20 percentage points among all demographics for people in their 50s. “Even for people who start out with the advantages, there’s no guarantee they can work as long as they want to,” Ms. Truesdale said. For those who own their homes free and clear, the Joint Center for Housing Studies found that older Americans often struggle to tap the equity locked up in their homes. And those homes might not be as valuable as their owners believe. Lower-income senior homeowners, who are more likely to be people of color, are also more liable to struggle to pay for necessary repairs and upgrades. “There’s less ability to invest in that property and maintain it over time,” Ms. Molinsky of the center for housing studies said. “People need to maintain the value of that asset if they want to use that equity later in life.” The effect that housing costs can have on the average household budget can prompt some people to view a mortgage as a risky obligation to carry into retirement — in some cases, whether that concern is warranted or not, said David Frisch, founder of Frisch Financial Group in Melville, N.Y. “In addition to the financial calculations, it’s also psychological in terms of risk,” he said, adding that even when the math suggests that maintaining a mortgage would cost less than paying it off, some homeowners’aversion to debtinfluences their choices. “Some people don’t want that mortgage payment hanging over their head even though they’re earning more” by keeping that cash in C.D.s or Treasury securities, he said. Some financial planners embrace a lessdebt-is-better philosophy, as well. Jamie Cox, managing partner of Harris Financial Group in Richmond, Va., said a homeowner’s psychological approach to debt plays a role in his reluctance to encourage a client to hold onto a mortgage. During the financial crisis, Mr. Cox said, his clients with paid-off mortgages were more sanguine about the drop in their portfolios because they didn’t have that obligation hanging over their heads. “They’re better investors because they’re not afraid of losing their homes,” he said. FIGURING OUT WHAT’S BEST FOR YOU No single decision will work for everyone so financial planners suggest that homeowners at or near retirement consider the specifics of their mortgage terms, cost of living and risk tolerance, along with the following points: • If you took advantage of historically low rates to refinance, it’s possible that you could earn a higher yield by keeping money earmarked for a mortgage payoff in safe investments like C.D.s or Treasuries. • Financial advisers warn against paying off a mortgage if doing so would leave you with little or no emergency savings. Advisers typically suggest keeping an emergency fund of between three and six months’ worth of living expenses in cash or similarly liquid instruments. • Your personal risk tolerance matters. Saving a couple of hundred dollars a month shouldn’t come at the price of your peace of mind.

A MEXICAN CRIMINAL group known for its brutality is moving in on seniors and their timeshares. The operation is simple. Cartel employees posing as sales representatives call up timeshare owners, offering to buy their investments back for generous sums. They then demand upfront fees for items like listing advertisements and paying government fines. The representatives persuade their victims to wire large amounts of money to Mexico, then they disappear. The scheme has netted the cartel, Jalisco New Generation, hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade, according to U.S. officials who were not authorized to speak publicly, via dozens of call centers in Mexico that relentlessly target American and Canadian timeshare owners. The cartel preys on retired people who want to leave money to family members by selling off assets. Several victims said the money they had lost to scammers exceeded the value of their initial investment in timeshares in Jamaica, California and Mexico. “I’m old, just like these clients,” said Michael Finn, founder of Finn Law Group in St. Petersburg, Fla., which has represented thousands of people facing timeshare fraud. “We tend to be trusting when someone calls chatting us up and selling us these dreams.” The timeshare industry is booming, with $10.5 billion in sales in 2022, a 30 percent jump from the year before, according to the American Resort Development Association. Nearly 10 million American households own timeshares, the association said, spending an average of $22,000 for their investment on top of annual fees of around $2,000. Most are in beach resorts. For scams that originate in Mexico, the F.B.I. can investigate only if it gets local cooperation. And American law firms cannot file civil lawsuits in Mexico without retaining a licensed Mexican lawyer. Over the past five years, American timeshare owners lost $288 million, according to the F.B.I. The real number is most likely larger. In October 2022, a retired couple — James, 76, and his wife, Nicki, 72 — said they received a call from a supposed real estate agent at Worry Free Vacations in Atlanta, offering to broker the sale of their timeshare in California to a wealthy Mexican. They asked not to publish their last name as they were embarrassed about being defrauded. The scam started with smaller fees, James said — a few thousand dollars here and there meant to settle Mexican government registration costs for “cross-border transactions.”The fees grew heftier as he was told he was being fined by the Mexican authorities for various violations and could be extradited for breaking the law unless he paid. About two dozen payments later, the couple have wired nearly $900,000, their life savings, to bank accounts in Mexico, according to records reviewed by The Times. Nicki said: “You know, when you work for so many years and save so you can enjoy your senior years, and then have it just ripped away from you, it’s just not right.” Mexican Cartel’s Scam Is Preying On Seniors and Their Timeshares Relentless calls target Americans and Canadians. By Maria Abi-Habib LIVING WELL 21

SENIOR LIVING Retirement Move? Consider YouProximity, for various reasons, often wins the day over a desire for pleasaBy Joanne Kaufman AFTER TOURING SEVERAL retirement communities, Marta Genoni winnowed the field to two appealing possibilities not far from the home she shared with her husband, Kenneth, a lawyer, in Westfield, N.J. But unable to make a final decision, she asked her elder daughter, a college administrator in Richmond, Va., to come north and weigh in. Her daughter did as requested, only to suggest that her parents consider another option altogether: a senior living community in Richmond. “I asked her, ‘Why on earth would I do that?’” Mrs. Genoni, now 79, recalled. “‘My life is in New Jersey. My family and friends are here. I have my subscription to the New York City Ballet and the New York Philharmonic.’” Her daughter assured her that there was plenty of culture in Richmond, and plenty of nice people, too. “And then she told us, ‘Sooner or later one or both of you are going to need an advocate,’” Mrs. Genoni recalled. “‘Why would you make me worry about you from a distance when you could be living near me?’” “And,” she continued, “that’s when I said to my husband, ‘Darned if she doesn’t make sense.’” The couple visited Richmond over Thanksgiving weekend in 2016, gave it the once-over, loved what they saw, and early the next year settled at Cedarfield, a continuing care retirement community in the city’s West End. In March 2020, when Mr. Genoni died suddenly, “my daughter was here in five minutes to take care of everything and helped edge me into widowhood,”Mrs. Genoni said. For many older adults, retirement means a move from where they had careers and raised families to a place with pleasant weather and amenities keyed to their new stage of life. Then, “in the experience or anticipation of decline,” they move again, this time “to a location that would be good for continued care,” said Douglas A. Wolf, emeritus professor of public administration and international affairs at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. But Professor Wolf now sees an emerging trend where some people are skipping the stint in the Sun Belt and moving directly to a retirement community, one chosen in large part for its proximity to their adult offspring. As a purely practical matter, older adults in good health are better positioned to pack up and relocate than their adult children who are tied down by their careers — and by the school schedule and extracurricular activities of their own children. Many of these retirees are envisioning a time that they’re going to need their children to take them to doctors’ appointments and help them fill out puzzling forms. Until 22 THE NEW YORK TIMES

Marta Genoni, left, and her husband looked at retirement communities near their home in New Jersey until their daughter in Richmond, Va., suggested they move there. So they did. Top, Joan and Eric Thompson with their sons, Josh, left, and Matt. The elder Thompsons moved to a retirement community in Shelburne, Vermont, facing page, to be near their sons. OLIVER PARINI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES; BELOW, BRIAN PALMER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES ur Family First. ant weather.

then, they’re celebrating holidays together with ease — no frequent flier miles involved — now that they’re all living in the same ZIP code (or close to it). Cedarfield opened in 1996, and until five or 10 years ago, drew exclusively from the Richmond area. “All the residents had a connection,” said Amy Chapman, the community’s executive director. “They went to the same colleges and belonged to the same country clubs. “But,” she continued, “post-Covid, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of people who are moving to be closer to their kids.” About 13 percent of the people on Cedarfield’s waiting list are from outside the state, and “most if not all of them” are moving to be near their children, Ms. Chapman said. “The pandemic changed the way we think about everything,” she said. “Not being able to travel and see loved ones — I think that has made people want to move to be closer to family. But seniors don’t want their children to be their primary caregivers. They don’t necessarily want them to have that responsibility, so they’re moving to retirement communities. They see that as a gift to their children.” Several years ago, Eric Thompson, now 82, a retired social worker, and his wife, Joan Thompson, now 77, a retired second grade teacher, had begun taking due note of the fact that they weren’t as young as they once were. Accordingly, they began check

‘The pandemic changed the way we think about everything.’ OLIVER PARINI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES ing out continuing care communities near their home in Baltimore. But when, in 2017, they went to Richmond, Vt., to visit the elder of their two sons, Matt, he encouraged them to look at Wake Robin, a senior living community near Lake Champlain in nearby Shelburne. The couple liked what they saw and signed on. In June 2022, they moved into a one-bedroom apartment there. “It seems that this is where we should land,” said Ms. Thompson, whose younger son, Josh, had moved to Shelburne from Burlington, Vt., in 2021. “Our whole immediate family is around here. Just the ability to gather for birthdays and other celebrations — we weren’t able to do that very much when we were living in Baltimore, and our sons were here. “When we were younger, we watched friends deal with parents who were far away, and we saw how difficult it was.” That concern was what motivated Mary Boundy, 83, a widow, to move in 2022 to the Watermark, a senior living community in Brooklyn Heights from her apartment in East Haven, Conn. “My daughter lives in Manhattan,” Ms. Boundy said, “and I didn’t think it was fair for her to have to keep taking the train to Connecticut to look in on me and go to doctors with me.” “It’s wonderful being near her,” she added. “We have a girls’ day once a week. We go out to lunch and go shopping.” Many seniors who have moved to be near their adult children are anticipating a time that they’ll need to lean on them for one thing or another. But part of their motivation in moving, said Ms. Chapman of Cedarfield, is the opportunity to have the adult children lean on them for a while. “They want to keep up the life role of being a grandparent,” she said. “They want to be needed.” Ms. Thompson said: “We know that the tables will be turned later on, and our children will be doing things for us. But at this point, we’re doing a lot of picking up the grandchildren from school and camp. For now, we can help.” LIVING WELL 23

SENIOR LIVING When Young and OldTalk, ChanPrograms that foster intergenerational interaction promote better commuBy Paula Span ON FRIDAYS AT 10 a.m., Richard Bement and Zach Ahmed sign on to their weekly video chat. The program that brought them together provides online discussion prompts and suggests arts-related activities, but the two largely ignore all that. “We just started talking about things that were important to us,” said Mr. Ahmed, 19, a pre-med student at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Since they met more than a year ago, their conversation topics have included: Pink Floyd, in a long exploration led by Mr. Bement, 76, a retired sales manager in Milford Township, Ohio; their religious faiths (the senior conversation partner is Episcopal, the younger is Muslim); their families; changing gender norms; and poetry, including Mr. Ahmed’s own efforts. “There’s this fallacy that these two generations can’t communicate,” Mr. Bement said. “I don’t find that to be true. “Zach tells me about his organic chemistry class, about being a student in 2024. I afford Zach an opportunity to share with me what it’s like to be him, and vice versa.” Miami University began Opening Minds Through Art, a program designed to foster intergenerational understanding, in 2007 and introduced an online version in 2022. This semester, about 70 pairs take part in the video program. Seventy-three more students engage in O.M.A.-sponsored arts activities with people who have dementia at a nursing home, a senior center and an adult day program. There are thousands of similar programs, said Donna Butts, executive director of Generations United, which promotes such efforts. Intergenerational programs can involve toddlers in day care centers playing with nursing home residents, older adults and schoolchildren engaging in community gardening, or college students and elders joining forces against climate change. “As age segregation in our society has increased, the impetus to try to overcome it has definitely grown,” said Karl Pillemer, a Cornell gerontologist who has led research on intergenerational communication. Factors like early retirement, age-segregated housing, and a decline in church membership and traditional social organizations have produced “a decrease in opportunities for natural intergenerational interactions,” Dr. Pillemer said. “There are whole industries where older people are uncommon,” he added, pointing to advertising, entertainment and technology. “Most people’s networks consist only of people 10 years older or 10 years younger than they are.” One reason that matters is the documented toll ageism takes on older adults’ health. Repeatedly, studies demonstrating the impact of older people’s negative attitudes about aging, many led by the Yale psychologist Dr. Becca Levy, have found associations between negative attitudes about aging 24 THE NEW YORK TIMES

MADELEINE HORDINSKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES nge Is Possible unication and understanding. A society in which different age groups do not interact is ‘a dangerous experiment,’ one researcher says. and the risks of cardiovascular events like strokes and heart attacks, and psychiatric illnesses including depression and anxiety. People with positive feelings about age, on the other hand, do better on memory and hearing tests, have better physical function and recover more quickly from periods of disability. And they live longer. Ageist attitudes form early in childhood, but they can be changed, Dr. Levy has found. Intergenerational programs are one way to counter them. For instance, studies of O.M.A. have demonstrated that after a single semester, student participants had improved overall attitudes toward people with dementia. In another study, younger participants developed greater affection, kinship, engagement and enthusiasm toward older Zach Ahmed, left, and Richard Bement met through the Opening Minds Through Art program, designed by Miami University to foster intergenerational understanding.

people with dementia, compared with students who didn’t participate. Research with medical students who participated in O.M.A. found similar results. Moreover, “as we have gotten more information on intergenerational programs, enough high-quality studies using comparison groups, the news gets better and better,” said Dr. Pillemer, the senior author of a 2019 meta-analysis finding that intergenerational programs significantly reduced ageism among younger participants. A recent meta-analysis of 23 intergenerational program studies from nine countries found other effects, including less depression, better physical health and increased “generativity” among older adults. The effects were small but statistically significant. Generativity refers to the desire to leave a legacy. Dr. Pillemer describes it as “a developmental need older people experience, assisting younger generations to create a better world that they themselves won’t live to see.” In Rochester, N.Y., for instance, young employees at the Center for Teen Empowerment worked with older members of a community group, Clarissa Street Legacy, to produce a film and exhibit that documented a lively Black community that was nearly destroyed by the construction of a highway decades ago. The teenagers “came to our homes with cameras and mics and asked us questions and listened as we described what Clarissa Street meant to us,” said Kathy Sprague-Dexter, 77, who grew up in the neighborhood and witnessed the displacement. “Our thinking was, we’re not going to be around for long. We need younger people to be a part of this.” The documentary has been shown in high schools and colleges around the country. “I don’t think we could have accomplished this without the young folks, their ingenuity, their skills and connections,” Ms. Sprague-Dexter said. Attempts to bridge a multigenerational gap don’t always achieve success. Programs come and go. A 2022 Generations United survey found that 40 percent of responding intergenerational programs had operated for a decade or longer, but almost half had just begun within the past year. “You can’t just put people in the same room and expect something to happen,” said Dr. Shannon Jarrott, a gerontologist and researcher at Ohio State University. The most effective programs provide preparatory training, she said, with activities and equipment appropriate for all parties. They work best with “consistent pairing,” so that the same two people “have a chance to keep building that relationship,” Dr. Jarrott said. More frequent interactions appear to have greater effects. “What really works is equal-status contact,” Dr. Pillemer said. “It’s not just a service project, primarily seen as a young person helping an older person.” “It’s only been 150 years or so since people went to anyone other than the oldest person in a community for advice about finding a mate or what crops to plant in a drought,” he added. “It’s a dangerous experiment to have a society in which that doesn’t happen.” Initially, Mr. Ahmed did think of the program, suggested to him by a sociology professor as a way to earn additional college credit, as a kind of favor. “I signed up expecting to gain nothing for myself,” he said. “The idea of elderly people as they age is rather depressing. They lose a lot of people in their lives.” But as conversations with Mr. Bement unfolded, Mr. Ahmed realized that the program was helping him too. “Things I’ve read about in history books, he has lived through,” Mr. Ahmed said of Mr. Bement. “It changes the stereotypic, stigmatized view of elderly people. They have stories and experiences and more life than I’ve had.” The two are now in their third semester. They met in person once, for dinner. “It was wonderful,” Mr. Bement recalled. “My life has been enhanced by this relationship.” Might they continue next year? “Why not?” Mr. Ahmed said. “I really do value this friendship.”

In the United States, Older Often Means Alone People over 60 are more likely to live alone in the U.S. and Europe than in other regions of the world. By Michael Kolomatsky WHO WILL BE by your side in your golden years? That’s a big question for a growing cohort. By 2050, the global population of people aged 60 and over will double from its 2020 total, to 2.1 billion, according to the World Health Organization. Depending on the region, household sizes for this group can vary. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, about 27 percent of American seniors live solo, similar to what’s found in the rest of North America and Europe, but 10 percentage points higher than the global average. It’s a stark figure, considering that research shows that living with others is beneficial to mental and physical health. About 6 percent of U.S. seniors live with extended family; in other regions of the globe it’s far more prevalent, according to the study. In both sub-Saharan Africa and the Asian-Pacific region, roughly half the over-60 population lives with extended family, while about 10 percent live alone. About 40 percent live with extended family in the Latin American/Caribbean and Middle East/North African regions. Much of the disparity comes down to economics: It’s harder to live alone in poorer nations. In wealthier ones, more people do so by choice or after the death of a partner. Cultural factors also play a role; the prevailing nuclear family arrangement in the U.S. is naturally dwindling down to two or one after children have left the nest. Households with older couples are also more common in wealthier nations; the average household size for those 60 and over in North Source: Pew Research Center HOUSEHOLD SIZE North America United States Europe Latin America/Caribbean Asia/Pacific Middle East/North Africa Sub-Saharan Africa World REGION 2.1 2.1 2.1 3.4 3.9 4.7 5.3 3.4 Household Size of Seniors THE NEWYORK TIMES 60+ LIVING ALONE Europe United States North America Latin America/Caribbean Asia/Pacific Middle East/North Africa Sub-Saharan Africa World REGION 28% 27% 26% 12% 11% 9% 9% 16% Share of Seniors Living Alone How Seniors Live People ages 60 and over tend to live in small households or alone in North America and Europe. America and Europe was found to be about two people, equating to about 46 percent of the over-60 population. That’s hopeful for those who value companionship but believe that three is a crowd. LIVING WELL 25

26 THE NEW YORK TIMES SENIOR LIVING THE MIDLIFE CRISIS is easy to poke fun at — especially if it’s someone else’s. The stereotype, as portrayed in movies and on TV, is familiar: A middle-aged man has a meltdown upon turning 40 and ditches his wife for a sports car. In real life, though, a midlife crisis is rarely so obvious or dramatic, or the sole province of men. Milestones like a 40th or 50th birthday, or becoming an empty nester, can provoke uncertainty about your life and your future. And this uncertainty can influence the way you spend. “Feelings drive behaviors,” said Nathan Astle, a financial therapist in Kansas City, Mo. If you feel dissatisfied with your life, you might buy a new wardrobe or spend on cosmetic procedures. Or if you’re seeking excitement, you might splurge on big-ticket items like travel or expensive wine. Of course, there’s no harm in the occasional treat, especially when you budget for it. The trouble is, a midlife crisis can hit just as retirement is becoming more real. So if you’re going to treat yourself, you should also make sure your retirement savings and investments are on track, experts say. When it comes to investing, time is more important than “timing,” saidAshleyAgnew, a financial therapist. In other words, saving for retirement early in life matters more than entering the market when stock prices are low and exiting when they’re high. As the runway to retirement gets shorter, there’s less time to save. “Short-term thinking can have a long-term impact,” she said. MartiAwad, a financial adviser in Denver, said signs that a midlife crisis might be in full swing include pulling money from your 401(k) or individual retirement account, or borrowing against your home for purchases that are wants, not needs. Running up credit card debt or hiding purchases from loved ones are also warning signals. But because shopping often boosts mood, spending isn’t seen as a problem — it’s mistaken for a solution, Mr. Astle said. So it’s crucial to plan before problems brew. To prevent a midlife crisis from derailing your financial goals, consider these safeguards. Keeping a Midlife Crisis From WIf entering your 40s or 50s throws you into an emotional tailspin, it may By Juli Fraga BEWARE LIFESTYLE CREEP If you are fortunate enough to be consistently employed over the years, income usually rises with age and experience. A 2022 survey by the U.S. Census Bureau found that the median household income for people ages 45 to 54 was $101,500 per year, compared with $80,240 for those 25 to 34. “Typically, people enter their highest earning years in their 40s and 50s,” said Paco de Leon, author of the book “Finance for the People.” With higher income, you may be able to afford more expensive restaurants or a bigger home. Buying these things, however, can unleash lifestyle creep, which is when your expenses rise with your income. “It’s a slippery slope,” Ms. de Leon said. For example, if you earn $80,000 a year and your salary increases by 3 percent, a few extra expenditures like weekend getaways can quickly eat up your additional money. Even a one-time splurge can be precarious, Ms. de Leon warned. If you buy design

SAM KALDA Wrecking Your Golden Years lead you to spend more and jeopardize your nest egg. item, think through the downsides before you do anything. Ms. de Leon suggests answering this question: “Will this put me in a more financially fragile position?” Spending a little extra may not hurt your bank account right away, but it’s important to calculate the long-term cost. For example, parting with an extra $50 each week becomes $200 by the month’s end. If you’re a decade away from retirement and keep up that pace, you’ll have spent $24,000 by the time you retire. ‘STRESSTEST’ YOUR BANK ACCOUNT If you’re considering a major expense, Ms. Awad suggests reviewing your retirement plan first. Financial planners have software that can run a “stress test” to analyze the effect of the purchase, she said. A stress test runs different return scenarios, revealing the inherent risk in your financial choices, she said. Seeing the range of potential returns can help you determine if your nest egg can weather the spend. FIND SUPPORT Financial mishaps can be embarrassing, which can prevent you from taking action. “Shame is the enemy of change,” Mr. Astle said. Therefore, if you’ve overspent, don’t be afraid to reach out for help. For example, if stress fueled your splurge, a financial therapist could teach you healthier ways to handle your emotions. Being able to name your feelings can help you respond differently, he said. If pulling money from your 401(k) hurt your financial health, a fee-only financial planner could help you get back on track. And if you have run up credit card debt, a professional can create a plan to help you pay it off. If you’re in need of low-cost or free credit counseling or budget management, there are resources at the Financial Counseling Association of America and the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. Even if your savings have taken a hit, the results of money missteps are rarely set in stone. As Mr. Astle said, “Taking small steps to correct your mistakes goes a long way.” er shoes, for instance, you may decide that your wardrobe looks drab. This mind-set can make former luxuries seem like necessities, causing you to spend more. To prevent lifestyle creep, try setting boundaries. For example, if your salary goes up, invest the extra income in your retirement account. Or put 20 percent of your raise in savings, Ms. de Leon said. TRICK YOUR BRAIN: USE A ‘BUY LIST’ A midlife crisis can unleash a “here and now” mentality about money, Ms. Agnew said. And this can make you more vulnerable to impulse spending. To prevent this, Ms. de Leon recommends creating what she calls a buy list. Write down everything you want and imagine yourself buying the items, she said. Shopping provides a dopamine rush. The buy list, however, can “trick your brain” into thinking you have spent the money, she said, providing the same reward. If two weeks pass and you still want the

InTheir 80s and 90s, and Still ChFor the Wild old Bunch of Alta, Utah, getting older means more time for By Charley Locke IT WAS A bluebird morning at the Alta Ski Area and Carol Bowling, 76, was looking for fresh powder. Her husband, Nick, 83, and his cousin Bob Phillips, 84, shouted over the whir of the chairlift, deciding where to go. “Something like this is skiable,” Mr. Phillips said of the black diamond run below the lift. At the top, the trio tightened their boots and waited for a few more friends. It was a Wednesday in late February at the Utah resort, one of the oldest in the country. The morning was cold and crisp with a few inches of new snow. It was time to ski. The group headed down Devil’s Elbow, a winding intermediate run. Mrs. Bowling found her powder, cutting left from the trail into the pine and spruce trees. The two men stayed together in the open, carving wide S-shaped turns. When they reached the bottom, it was almost 11 a.m. — time to meet up with Alta’s seniors ski club, the Wild old Bunch. THE WILD OLD BUNCH (with a lowercase “o” to de-emphasize the “old”) started in 1973 and has around 115 members. A few depart each year, some to the deep powder of the afterlife and others to an old age without skiing. Jan Brunvand, 90, suffered a scary fall his first day this season and decided 85 years on skis was enough. But fueled by baby boomers, the group’s rolls stay strong. “It’s hard to believe 90-year-olds can ski that well until you see them do it,” said Dr. Brett Toresdahl, an associate professor of sports medicine at the University of Utah, who sees plenty of older skiers — in his practice and on the slopes. “You’d assume that it’s foolish for them to continue skiing, but when done carefully and wisely, it can be a great way for them to stay healthy and be in community.” Some inevitable effects of aging increase the risk of ski injuries. Bone density and muscle mass decrease; reaction time slows and balance falters. Dr. Toresdahl said that when he treats an older skier, it’s most often for a fracture. But that’s not to say older skiers get hurt more often. They don’t seem to, Dr. Toresdahl said. A series of unspoken rules among the Wild old Bunch help see to that: Only ski on clear days. Ski on weekdays, when the crowds are smaller. Ski familiar territory, where you know the hidden rocks and shady patches from decades of experience. The Wild old Bunch agree on another reality of skiing with age: Training is necessary. “We work out the rest of the year so that we stay in shape for skiing,” said Mrs. Bowling, who got two trampolines for her local gym so she and her husband could jump back and forth in the off-season. Keeping fit eases some of the risks, but nobody can ski forever. “It’s not the age that will limit you, but your cardiovascular health,” said Dr. Gina Fernandez, an assistant professor at Dartmouth’s medical

“I ski better now than when I was younger,” said Classie Page, a member of the Wild old Bunch, a seniors ski club in Alta, Utah, that has about 115 members. PHOTOGRAPHS BY KATE RUSSELL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES hasing Powder the mountain. And anyone over 80 skis free. school who specializes in geriatrics. She steers older skiers toward workouts for strength and stability, but her biggest advice concerns mind-set: Know your limits. ON THE SLOPES, members of the Wild old Bunch ski in small groups or on their own. Around 11 a.m., they gather mid-mountain at the one round table at Alf’s Restaurant for hot drinks, doughnuts and gossip. One day, 12 skiers pulled up chairs. The friends caught up about upcoming surgeries (one spotted his orthopedist across the room) and boasted about visits from grandchildren. They also talked about gear. Fredi Jakob, 90, started skiing in leather boots on straight skis made of hickory in 1951. He pulled out his phone and passed around a LIVING WELL 27

SENIOR LIVING Clockwise from top left, Hugh Paik, Becky Hammond and LeAfter morning runs, members of the Wild old Bunch warm up black-and-white photo: a young couple in front of a mountain, beaming. “We went skiing on our honeymoon in 1957,” he said. “It was 28 below zero, but we didn’t care.” In the decades since their first runs, the group has witnessed changes to the sport far beyond composite skis and polyurethane boots. Many of them learned to ski before high-speed lifts and overnight snow grooming — or $189 day passes. Alta is a favorite among older skiers in part because of its senior-friendly policy: Anyone over 80 skis free. Taos Ski Valley, in New Mexico and Mammoth Mountain, in California, have similar rules, and a number of resorts offer steep discounts. For retirees on fixed incomes, that can be a lifeline to the sport that still defines them. When Matt Kindred, 82, worked as a landscaper and a river guide in the Grand Canyon, he would regularly do 45-mile backcountry trips on skis. In recent years, he has slowed down, thanks to a long list of ailments: a major stroke, prostate and colorectal cancer, two hip replacements. “The worst was the colorectal cancer, because I had to ski with a colostomy bag,” he said. “I had to try hard not to crash, because if I did, it would be such a mess.” But the challenge is part of the point. “I have to work at it,” he said. “It makes me live longer. Besides, I have to keep up with my wife.” These days, he sticks to the easy trails. He’s weak on his right side and carefully gripped the safety bar on the ski lift. Above a grove of groomed green runs, he waved goodbye to his wife, Becky Hammond, 61, who was headed to the blues midway up the mountain. Then Mr. Kindred’s bent figure slowly, steadily worked down the slope. SEVERAL OTHER RESORTS host clubs for older skiers: the Over the Hill Gang at Copper Mountain in Colorado, for instance, and the Silver Griffins at Bromley in Vermont. “I wouldn’t be skiing much without this group,” Fran Ando, 92, said of 70+ Ski Club, a national group that goes on trips across the United States and beyond. Last summer, she skied with the club in New Zealand; this February, she joined it in Salt Lake City. At home in Torrance, Calif., her agility makes her an outlier. “The people I started skiing with have all either died or quit skiing,” she said, relaxing at a group happy hour after a day skiing at Brighton, another resort outside Salt Lake City. “Many of my friends are through this group now.” Aging often means isolation. And that can take a toll on our overall well-being, said 28 THE NEW YORK TIMES

eo Exley remain active on the slopes at Alta Ski Area. Ms. Hammond has been skiing at the mountain since high school. pmid-mountain over hot drinks and doughnuts at Alf’s Restaurant. PHOTOGRAPHS BY KATE RUSSELL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Wednesday evening, a rotating cast comes together for dinner at a nearby Olive Garden, where they’re joined by former skiers and non-skiing spouses. The groups also offer members a way to stay true to their former selves: Once a skier, always a skier. “Inside of every old, beat-up body on the ski slope is a 16-year-old kid,” said Mr. Phillips, who skis with hearing aids and a knee brace. “And while you keep slowly falling apart, the 16-year-old is still in there.” Dr. Ashwin Kotwal, an assistant professor of geriatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. “Our social connections are tied to all sorts of physical health conditions,” he explained, from memory to heart disease. So it’s significant that older skiers describe a version of aging in a community that starts on the slopes and extends to the rest of their lives. Members of the Wild old Bunch regularly get together for birthday parties and summer cookouts; and every

Mom and Dad Are More InvolvedSurveys suggest that today’s intensive parenting has benefits, not just riBy Claire Cain Miller AMERICAN PARENTING HAS become more involved — requiring more time, money and mental energy — not just when children are young, but well into adulthood. The popular conception has been that this must be detrimental to children, with snowplow parents clearing obstacles and ending up with adult children who have failed to launch, still dependent upon them. But two recent Pew Research Center surveys — of young adults 18 to 34 and of parents of children that age — tell a more nuanced story. Most parents are in fact highly involved in their grown children’s lives, it found, texting several times a week and offering advice and financial support. Yet in many ways, their relationships seem healthy and fulfilling. Nine in 10 parents rate their relationships with their young adult children as good or excellent, and so do eight in 10 young adults, and this is consistent across income. Rather than feeling worried or disappointed about how their children’s lives are going, eight in 10 parents say they feel proud and hopeful. “These parents, who are Gen X, are more willing to say, ‘Hey, this is good, I like these people, they’re interesting, they’re fun to be with,’” said Karen L. Fingerman, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies adults’ relationships with their families. As for the adult children, she said, “You get advice from a 50-year-old with life experience who is incredibly invested in you and your success.” Also, these close relationships don’t seem to be holding back young people from reaching certain milestones of independence. Compared with their parents as young adults in the early 1990s, they are much more likely to be in college or have a college degree, Pew found. They are somewhat more likely to have a full-time job, and their inflation-adjusted incomes are higher. (They are much less likely, though, to be married or have children.) Experts say contemporary hyper-intensive parenting can go too far — and has gotten more hands-on since the young adults in the survey were children. Young people say their mental health is suffering, and recent data shows they are much more likely to say this than those before them. Some researchers have sounded alarms that one driver of this is children’s lack of independence, and that overparenting can deprive children of developing skills to handle adversity. The new data suggests that, indeed, young adults are more reliant on their parents — texting them for life advice when older generations may have figured out their problems on their own. But the effects do not seem to be wholly negative. Professor Fingerman and her colleagues have found that close relationships between parents and grown children protected children from unhealthy behaviors, and young adults who received significant parental support were better able to cope with change and had higher satisfaction with their lives. It was a finding “we just couldn’t believe the first time,” she said, because of the assumptions about over-involved parents.

JEENAH MOON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES d. And Kids Are Fine With It. isks, as children grow into young adults. to try and run her life, but I’m always there if she needs me.” Mia Goericke has seen friends who can’t solve problems or make small decisions on their own, but she said that’s different from asking her mother for help. “She will usually ask me what my goals are and try to understand my thinking rather than just tell me what to do,” she said. “It’s like an incredible resource I have at my fingertips.” When baby boomers were growing up, there was a belief, rooted in the American ideal of self-sufficiency, that children should be independent after age 18. But that was in some ways an aberration, social scientists said. Before then, and again now, it has been common for members of different generations to be more interdependent. Parents’involvementin young adults’lives began to grow in the 1970s. The transition to adulthood became longer, and less clear-cut: It was no longer necessarily the case that at 18 children left home for college, marriage or jobs. Parenting gradually became more intensive, as people had fewer children and invested more in their upbringings. Cathy Perry, 66, said she has a very different relationship with her sons, 32 and 36, than she had with her parents when she was that age. They all live in the St. Louis area, and text on a family group chat several times a week. Her older son shares updates on his children, and asks for advice on his career, finances and home remodeling. As a young adult, she lived an 11-hour drive from her parents, and calls were charged by the minute. “I feel that I have a much closer and more open relationship with my kids, where they are more free to express their opinions on things I might not agree with,” she said. Open, emotional conversations have become more of a priority for parents, research shows: “They may be the first generation of adults who have parents who actually grew up with the mind-set of talking about this kind of stuff,” Professor Lebowitz said. In the survey, six in 10 young adults said they relied on their parents for emotional support, and a quarter of young adults said Both things can be true, said Eli Lebowitz, director of the Program for Anxiety Disorders at the Yale Child Study Center — “that they do rely a lot on their parents, and they do get a lot of positive support from them.” In previous research, parents often expressed ambivalence about their continued involvement in their adult children’s lives. But the Pew study suggests that has changed, Professor Fingerman said, perhaps a sign they have come to embrace it. Among parents, seven in 10 say they are satisfied with their level of involvement in their grown child’s life. Just 7 percent say they’re too involved, and one-quarter would like even more involvement. Young adults say the same. Adriana Goericke, from Santa Cruz, Calif., texts with her daughter, Mia, a college sophomore in Colorado, a few times a day. When her daughter asks for advice, mostly about navigating friendships and dating, her mother said she sees her role as a sounding board: “She knows I’m not going LIVING WELL 29 FAMILY LIFE